Mary leant out of the window to call to him, but he had turned to the right down one of the five lanes and was already lost to sight.
The carriage rattled on along the Bodmin road. There were still three miles to cover before the tall chimneys of Jamaica Inn broke upon the skyline, and those miles were the wildest and most exposed of all the long one-and-twenty that stretched between the two towns.
Mary wished now that she had gone with Francis Davey. She would not hear the wind in Altarnun, and the rain would fall silently in the sheltered lane. Tomorrow she could have knelt in the church and prayed for the first time since leaving Helford. If what he said was true, then there would be cause for rejoicing after all, and there would be some sense in giving thanks. The day of the wrecker was over; he would be broken by the new law, he and his kind; they would be blotted out and razed from the countryside as the pirates had been twenty, thirty years ago; and there would be no memory of them any more, no record left to poison the minds of those who should come after. A new generation would be born who had never heard their name. Ships would come to England without fear; there would be no harvest with the tide. Coves that had sounded once with the crunch of footsteps on shingle and the whispered voices of men would be silent again, and the scream that broke upon the silence would be the scream of a gull. Beneath the placid surface of the sea, on the ocean bed, lay skulls without a name, green coins that had once been gold, and the old bones of ships: they would be forgotten for ever more. The terror they had known died with them. It was the dawn of a new age, when men and women would travel without fear, and the land would belong to them. Here, on this stretch of moor, farmers would till their plot of soil and stack the sods of turf to dry under the sun as they did today, but the shadow that had been upon them would have vanished. Perhaps the grass would grow and the heather bloom again where Jamaica Inn had stood.
She sat in the corner of the carriage, with the vision of the new world before her; and through the open window, travelling down upon the wind, she heard a shot ring out in the silence of the night, and a distant shout, and a cry. The voices of men came out of the darkness, and the padding of feet upon the road. She leant out of the window, the rain blowing in on her face, and she heard the driver of the carriage call out in fear as his horse shied and stumbled. The road rose steeply from the valley, winding away to the top of the hill, and there in the distance were the lean chimneys of Jamaica Inn crowning the skyline like a gallows. Down the road came a company of men, led by one who lept like a hare and tossed a lantern before him as he ran. Another shot rang out, and the driver of the carriage crumpled in his seat and fell. The horse stumbled again and headed like a blind thing for the ditch. For a moment the carriage swayed upon its wheels, rocked, and was still. Somebody screamed a blasphemy to the sky; somebody laughed wildly; there was a whistle and a cry.
A face was thrust in at the window of the carriage, a face crowned with matted hair that fell in a fringe above the scarlet, bloodshot eyes. The lips parted, showing the white teeth; and then the lantern was lifted to the window so that the light should fall upon the interior of the carriage. One hand held the lantern, and the other clasped the smoking barrel of a pistol; they were long slim hands, with narrow pointed fingers, things of beauty and of grace, the rounded nails crusted with dirt.
Joss Merlyn smiled, the crazy, delirious smile of a man possessed, maddened, and exalted by poison; and he levelled the pistol at Mary, leaning forward into the carriage so that the barrel touched her throat.
Then he laughed and threw the pistol back over his shoulder, and, wrenching open the door, he reached for her hands and pulled her out beside him on the road, holding the lantern above his head so that all could see her. There were ten or twelve of them standing in the road, ragged and ill kept, half of them drunk as their leader, wild eyes staring out of shaggy bearded faces; and one or two had pistols in their hands, or were armed with broken bottle, knives, and stones. Harry the pedlar stood by the horse's head, while face downwards in the ditch lay the driver of the carriage, his arm crumpled under him, his body limp and still.
Joss Merlyn held Mary to him and tilted her face to the light, and when they saw who she was a howl of laughter broke from the company of men, and the pedlar put his two fingers to his mouth and whistled.
The landlord bent to her and bowed with drunken gravity; he seized her loose hair in his hand and twisted it in a rope, sniffing at it like a dog.
"So it's you, is it?" he said. "You've chosen to come back again, like a little whining bitch, with your tail between your legs?"
Mary said nothing. She looked from one to the other of the men in the crowd, and they stared back at her, jeering hemming in upon her and laughing, pointing to her wet clothes, fingering her bodice and her skirt.
"So you're dumb, are you?" cried her uncle, and he hit her across the face with the back of his hand. She called out and put up an arm to protect herself, but he knocked it away and, holding her wrist, he doubled it behind her back. She cried with the pain, and he laughed again.
"You'll come to heel if I kill you first," he said. "Do you think you can stand against me, with your monkey face and your damned impudence? And what do you think you do, at midnight, riding on the King's highway in a hired carriage, half naked, with your hair down your back? You're nothing but a common slut, after all." He jerked at her wrist, and she fell.
"Leave me alone," she cried; "you have no right to touch me or speak to me. You're a bloody murderer and a thief, and the law knows it too. The whole of Cornwall knows it. Your reign is over, Uncle Joss. I've been to Launceston today to inform against you."
A hubbub rose amongst the group of men; they pressed forward, shouting at her and questioning, but the landlord roared at them, waving them back.
"Get back, you damned fools! Can't you see she's trying to save her skin by lies?" he thundered. "How can she inform against me when she knows nothing? She's never walked the eleven miles to Launceston. Look at her feet. She's been with a man somewhere down on the road, and he sent her back on wheels when he'd had enough of her. Get up — or do you want me to rub your nose in the dust?" He pulled her to her feet and held her beside him. Then he pointed to the sky, where the low clouds fled before the scurrying wind and a wet star gleamed.
"Look there," he yelled. "There's a break in the sky, and the rain's going east. There'll be more wind yet before we're through, and a wild grey dawn on the coast in six hours' time. We'll waste no more of it here. Get your horse, Harry, and put him in the traces here; the carriage will carry half a dozen of us. And bring the pony and the farm cart from the stable; he's had no work for a week. Come on, you lazy drunken devils, don't you want to feel gold and silver run through your hands? I've lain like a hog for seven crazy days, and by God, I feel like a child tonight and I want the coast again. Who'll take the road with me through Camelford?"
A shout rose from a dozen voices, and hands were thrust into the air. One fellow burst into a snatch of song, waving a bottle over his head, reeling on his feet as he stood; then he staggered and fell, crumpling onto his face in the ditch. The pedlar kicked him as he lay, and he did not stir; and, snatching the bridle of the horse, he dragged the animal forward, urging him with blows and cries to the steep hill, while the wheels of the carriage passed over the body of the fallen man, who, kicking for an instant like a wounded hare, struggled from the mud with a scream of terror and pain, and then lay still.